This week’s show features a review of the online comic Extra Life by Scott Johnson. After being informed of the review Scott invited us to be on his own podcast, Extra Life Radio. So, last night we logged into Skype and chatted about starting Digital Strips and web comics in general. You can download the interview by clicking right here.
After doing so many interviews in which we were the ones asking the questions it was a little weird being the question receiver. But, Scott is a great guy and I really respect his work and the whole thing ended up being a lot of fun. You can now download the latest Extra Life Radio podcast and hear us answering questions for a change.
That was quite a love-in 😉
Your conversation has elicited more of my talk on random points!
I guess you\’ve mentioned the \’We walk the walk\’ angle before – EG we draw a comic as well as offer criticism which can enhance cred, as one informs the other. Actually I\’d say synthesis and evaluation are totally different areas. Plenty of artists can be hopeless in offering structured criticism, and a lot of critics who make great points can barely illustrate the same points if they try to put them into artistic practice. I\’d say that people highly skilled enough to do both things are more constrained by time and focus than anything else. But beyond being conversational here, I\’m just saying that I don\’t incidentally think of you as being better critics because you also produce some comics. I think of you as being good critics based on the quality of what you say.
Also, I\’m frikkin glad you didn\’t start that comic about the gamer humour!!!
On the quest for a successful commercial model project, this will sound doomy, but the way I feel at the moment, I think it will mostly remain \’accidental\’ because of the nature of the web. Processes of distinction for the commerical distribution of art and entertainment have always relied on a degree of physical difficulty to keep total novices off the playing field. I can\’t just go and publish my own book easily and have it look as good as one in a store, or have it distributed like a publisher can. I can\’t have everyone see my budget film cos I can\’t get it into cinemas without huge vetting processes, etc. And those are inherent quality controls, for all anyone\’s complaints. The web removes all the physical barriers. The greatest cartoonist and the worst can both publish as much material as they want in the exact same venue with equal ease. With the initial vetting processes gone, every item must now be personally assessed in full form by the reader or critic, but the amount of material is crushing, and will only ever become more and more crushing. Finding the good material will only get harder and harder, and the situation\’s already quite ridiculous now. Aaaand that good material, once identified, still has to be promoted/singled out for attention by whatever communication channels to gain the readership required to propel commercial success.
Whatever way I look at it, every part of the process of vetting – assessment – promotion, only ever gets more difficult to follow through to any kind of commercial success as the number of webcomics continues to explode in the unchecked manner that the web allows.
Yknow, I\’m tempted to join the throng with a critical blog of webcomics, but I\’m concerned that (a) I\’d have to read too much s**t, and (b) my stances are so unfashionable in webcomic-dom that all I\’d do is piss people off 🙂
Whoa! That was a long comment! 🙂 Me no ready so long stuff.